1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to device design and, more particularly, to a method and computer program product for efficiently and accurately finding the statistical bounds, the corresponding parameter corners, and the probability density function of one or more performance targets for a circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Parameters of circuits of the same design, including parameters of specific components of the circuit (e.g., of integrated circuits, of semiconductor devices, of interconnect structures, etc.), will often differ in random ways (e.g., due to random process variations). Thus, circuit performance will also differ. To ensure that a circuit will achieve a given performance target when manufactured, designers often use a simulator to determine the statistical distribution (e.g., a histogram distribution plot) and the statistical bounds (i.e., the lower and upper statistical bounds) and corresponding parameter corners for the performance target. Typical simulators (e.g., Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) simulators), associated compact models and other electronic design automation (EDA) tools support Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Unfortunately, when Monte Carlo simulations are used to determine the probability density function, the statistical bounds and the corresponding parameter corners of a performance target, a very large number of simulation runs must be performed and the results may not be as accurate as required. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method for efficiently and accurately finding the statistical bounds, the corresponding parameter corners, and the probability density function (i.e., the statistical probability distributions) of one or more performance targets of a circuit.